THE DETERMINATION OF EASTER DAY. 



173 



Easter would relieve them from the burdens which priestcraft had 

 imposed and from the complications of the ecclesiastical calendar, 

 which inflicted so much inconvenience and loss. Schoolmasters and 

 parents wanted a fixed Easter, so that the school terms might not vary 

 in length. The industrial classes also wished for it, as their principal 

 holiday was taken at Whitsuntide, which depended upon Easter, and 

 it was very inconvenient for them when they went for their holiday 

 to Blackpool, etc., not to know beforehand what the weather would be 

 like. But if you fixed Easter on the 1st or 2nd Sunday in April, you 

 would please thy children, the parents, the schoolmasters and the 

 workers. But w r e could not have a fixed Easter because Christendom 

 would not agree upon it. It would be of great advantage to have 

 exactly 52 weeks in each year, and to call the remaining day a dies 

 iion, New Year's Day, not including it either in the week, or the 

 month, or the quarter. This would simplify everything, as any given 

 date in the calendar would always fall on the same day of the week, 

 whatever the year. Of course in leap year there w^ould have to 

 be two extra days instead of one. 



The Secretary then read the following notes, which had been 

 received from the Rev. D. R. Fotheringham, F.R.A.S. : — 



Page 155, line 3. — The old Roman calendar, in use before Julius 

 Caesar, was not lunar, except in the sense that all " months " are 

 approximate lunations. It was quite an irregular and unscientific 

 measure of time. No doubt the " Nones " and " Ides " are relics of 

 the observance of the first quarter and the full moon. But the con- 

 nexion between the moon and the calendar had long been lost, 

 and was quite irrecoverable. 



Dr. Dowming is quite right in speaking of the introduction of the 

 Julian calendar as one of the most remarkable achievements of that 

 most remarkable man. It might have been noted in this connexion 

 that, as the calendar came from Egypt, it was doubtless founded on 

 the Egyptian calendar of exactly 365 days, without leap year. This 

 calendar had been in use for more than four thousand years. And 

 observations of Sothis (or Sirius) that had been carried on for nearly 

 as long, revealed the error of a day in every fourth year. Hence the 

 clever device of a leap year. 



Page 155, line 11. — Julius Csesar was not the only great Imperialist 

 to select a new moon for a new epoch. Sir Edward Grey chose- a 

 new moon — being also a Friday — for the proclamation of the new 



